An in depth, intellectual, well considered commentary and anlysis of our beloved New York Football Giants, published from our humble abode in Scarsdale, NY

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Second view of Redskins game

After reviewing the game again and looking at the statistics, I have a slightly different impression of the Giants defense on Sunday. RGIII and the 'Skins did most of their damage and looked unstoppable in the first half - 3 possessions, 3 scores, about 140 yards rushing. In the second half, the Giants did a better job, giving up only 1 TD on one possession. The other 3 points came after their INT on Giants 20 and the defense actually did a creditable job holding the Redskins to a FG. Giants forced several turnovers in the 2nd half, got a few sacks, which means they were doing better and stopping some plays. I still believe that when the Giants review the game on film and figure out what the Redskins were doing with their option and play fake of the option pass, they will be able to come up with a plan to at least somewhat contain them. Right now their WR weapons are good but not that dangerous and their loss of TE Davis is also a blow, so Giants should be able to come up with something.

I said also in my first post that Eli did not have a great day throwing the ball, but the truth is that applies to only about 4 or 5 bad balls he threw. most of the 40 passes he threw were very accurate and some were placed into very tight windows. When Nicks comes back to full strength, the passing game will get sharper.

On the deep pass to Moss over Hosley that gave the Redksins the temporary (19 seconds) lead, it was curious that Rolle was standing in the middle of the field, not ranging back and trying to give Hosley deep help. I speculated in my earlier post that Rolle was affected by his 2 INTs against the 9ers and was trying to stay shallow to jump a route and make a hero play. However looking at the play again last night on DVR, I came to a different conclusion. Giants defense called a big blitz on the play with LB crashing the line. The DBs were all in man to man coverage with no help, or only one person back there in Rolle. All the routes that Redskins ran were either to the outside or deep, so if Rolle wanted to jump a short toute, he would slid to the sideline. I think Rolle's job was not to give deep help but to spy the QB in case he broke through the row of LBs that were blitzing. Since Giants were in man coverage, if RGIII had gotten past the line, all the DBs would have had their backs turned and Griffin would have run a long way. Further, there would have been no LBs there to try and stop him, since they were blitzing. Rolle was a spy. Hosley was beaten by a step, not by a lot, and it took a really good throw by Griffin to make the play, but you can still question the call by Fewell of taking a risk like that on 1st down.